Testing Analysis – Lap times

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With the opening test of the third season of the FIA Formula E Championship already in the books, we have our first indications of the comparative pace of each team and who might be in contention for the spoils when we head to Hong Kong for the opening round.

With the teams performing mostly shakedown work with the occasional qualifying and race simulation, the times set by each driver will by no means provide a definitive pecking order. However, we can at least analyse the data and look to see where teams might be improving or falling behind, or how team mates are stacking up against each other.

The biggest surprise of the three day test was how little time it took for the lap record to be broken. One would think that the opening test would be spent just making sure the car works and getting some mileage on the car. However, it was only day two when rookie driver Felix Rosenqvist beat Lucas di Grassi’s time from last year by two tenths to set a new lap record of 1:29.719s. It didn’t take long for the time to be brought down further, as the same afternoon Jean-Eric Vergne lapped his Techeetah in 1:29.634s, a time that would not be broken leaving the Frenchman with the Donington Park lap record.

Behind Vergne and Rosenqvist, reigning champion Sebastien Buemi also went under the previous lap record for the third fastest time of the week, setting a 1:29.765s.

Having taken an average time for each team based on their respective driver’s fastest laps, the order doesn’t appear to have changed much, with the surprising exception of Mahindra leading the way with an average fastest lap of 1:29.907s, ahead of Renault e.dams with 1:30.001s and ABT Schaeffler with 1:30.163s.

Dragon Racing and DS Virgin were the fourth and fifth fastest teams, ahead of MS Amlin Andretti, Venturi and Techeetah. Despite Vergne setting the lap record, his team mate Ma Qing Hua did not go all out for pace, instead opting for reliability tests, thus bringing the team average down. Once Ma runs up to his full potential, expect Techeetah to rise up the order.

New team Jaguar ran four drivers during testing, with Adam Carroll in action for all three days. Alex Lynn, Mitch Evans and Harry Tincknell shared duties in the sister car. With each of the three drivers only having a day each, not forgetting Tincknell having to endure wet weather running, their standing of ninth on average may not be fully representative of their potential.

The same can be said for NextEV, who prop up the field in tenth. Nelson Piquet Jr, Oliver Turvey and Dean Stoneman all had one day each, not leaving enough time for each driver to exploit the full pace of the car.

Looking at the separate sector times, there were a few drivers who held fastest sector times throughout the week but ultimately Vergne once again took the spoils on that one with the overall fastest sector one with a 19.875s and sector two with a 35.121s, while Rosenqvist took the fastest third sector with 34.454s, giving us a theoretical fastest lap of 1:19.450s.

As always with testing, and as most drivers will tell you, different teams will be running different programmes and not everyone will have shown their full potential yet.

With another three days of testing coming up next week, we are due for more telling signs of where each team will be in the pecking order once the season kicks off on October 9 in Hong Kong.

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Images courtesy of Rajan Jangda

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